A new cookbook ties healthy eating to good sleep

Anyone who has ever suffered in bed after eating three slices of pizza could surmise there is some relationship between food and sleep quality.

For Marie-Pierre St-Onge, the director of Columbia University’s Center of Excellence for Sleep and Circadian Research, years of studying the relationship confirmed it.

Data from large-scale population studies showed that eating a lot of saturated fat and simple carbohydrates made it harder to get deep, restorative sleep, she said. The inverse was also true. People who don’t get enough sleep, for example, were more likely to be obese.

“It’s a cycle of having poor sleep leading to poor dietary choices, and lower dietary quality that further propels poor sleep,” St-Onge said.

If bad food could keep you awake, she wondered, can good food help you sleep? Her research led to a new cookbook, “Eat Better, Sleep Better,” co-written with Kat Craddock, editor-in-chief of the food magazine Saveur.

St-Onge said the answer is yes. The book's recipes reflect her findings that people with high-fiber diets report better sleep, and the dishes rely heavily on what she called sleep-supporting ingredients.

Nuts, seeds and whole grains such as barley, buckwheat and kasha contain melatonin, a compound the body also produces naturally to regulate the circadian rhythm. Research suggests the anti-inflammatory properties of ginger and turmeric improve sleep quality, as do the phytochemicals in brightly colored fruits and vegetables like squash, cherries, bananas and beefsteak tomatoes, St-Onge said.

Besides the properties of particular ingredients, the combination of certain foods is key to encouraging your body to produce the hormones it needs to fall and stay sleep, she said. Tryptophan, for example, is an essential amino acid only found in food, but it requires nutrients such as magnesium, zinc and B vitamins to be converted into melatonin and serotonin.

St-Onge noted that people shouldn’t expect to fall dead asleep after loading up on certain ingredients at dinner. Food has to be processed, with chemical reactions transforming nutrients over time before they are absorbed.

“It’s making sure you have a healthy diet across the day to have the nutrients at the ready,” she said.

Recipes were developed for every meal of the day, plus snacks and desserts, the authors said. The two then arranged them into a 28-day meal plan designed to improve your sleep.

Craddock said developing the recipes came naturally because the research stressed using a variety of foods she likes to cook with anyway. The challenge was making sure the recipes fell within the nutritional requirements.

“My instincts are to go hard on bacon and butter and cheese and heavy cream, and she pared a lot of that back,” Craddock said.

Instead of bacon, Craddock said, she could achieve similar flavors with a little olive oil and smoked paprika. “It was a bit of a dance back and forth between my more restaurant approach to making foods delicious and her nutritional goals.”

A Creole gumbo recipe, for instance, is inspired more by a vegetarian version often served during Lent than the heavier traditional one. The andouille often used — a pork product high in saturated fat — is swapped out for healthier chicken sausage. Adding more than a pound of mixed greens makes it more like a vegetable stew, and brown rice adds a complex carbohydrate.

With numerous charts and scientific research, the book is a practical guide to improving your diet in general. But Craddock said it also introduces people to international ingredients and dishes so they might think beyond what they eat every day.

“If you dig a little deeper and look a little further, there are healthful and flavorful and exciting ingredients from many cultures that are right in our own backyard,” she said.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Albert Stumm writes about food, travel and wellness. Find his work at https://www.albertstumm.com